Digital Libraries are complex and advanced forms of information systems which extend and augment their physical counterparts by amplifying existing resources and services and enabling development of new kinds of human problem solving and expression. Their complexity arises from the data-rich domain of discourse as well as from extended demands for multi-disciplinary input, involving distributed systems architectures, structured digital documents, collaboration support, human-computer interaction, information filtering, etc. In addition to the broad range of technical issues, ethics and intellectual property rights add to the complication that is normally associated with the development, maintenance, and use of Digital Libraries. The Second European Conference on Digital Libraries (ECDL’98) builds upon the success of the first of this series of European Conferences on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries, held last year in Pisa, Italy, September 1-3, 1997. This series of conferences is partially funded by the TMR Programme of the European Commission and is actively supported and promoted by the European Research Consortium on Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM). The aim is to bring together the different communities involved in the development of Digital Libraries, to review progress and to discuss strategies, research and technological development (RTD) issues, as well as specific topics related to the European context. These communities include professionals from universities, research centres, industry, government agencies, public libraries, etc.

Annotation Fourteen technical papers presented at the May 1997 meeting featuring the latest technical results and issues in digital libraries. The papers focus on digital library images (digital image indexing and retrieval, wavelet-based image indexing techniques), a discussion of digital libraries in Europe, specific library projects such as Columbia's digital news system, and new technologies for documents, information sources, and security. Includes illustrations. Lacks an index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

ECDL 2002 was the 6th conference in the series of European Conferences on Research and Advanced Technologies for Digital Libraries. Following previous events in Pisa (1997), Heraklion (1998), Paris (1999), Lisbon (2000), and Da- stadt (2001), this year ECDL was held in Rome. ECDL 2002 contributed, - gether with the previous conferences, to establishing ECDL as the major - ropean forum focusing on digital libraries and associated technical, practical, and social issues. ECDL 2002 continued the tradition already established by the previous conferences in meeting the needs of a large and diverse constituency, which includes researchers, practitioners, educators, policy makers, and users. The focus of ECDL 2002 was on underlying principles, methods, systems, and tools to build and make available e?ective digital libraries to end users. Architecture, metadata, collection building, web archiving, web technologies,- books, OAI applications, preservation, navigation, query languages, audio video retrieval, multimedia-mixed media, user studies and evaluation, humanities, and digital libraries were some of the key issues addressed. An international Program Committee was set up composed of 61 members, with representatives from 25 countries. A total of 145 paper submissions, 15 poster submissions, and 18 proposals for demos were received. Each paper was evaluated by 3 referees and 42 full papers and 6 short papers of high quality were selected for presentation.

This book constitutes a carefully arranged selection of papers presented at the Forum on Research and Technology Advances in Digital Libraries, ADL'95, held in McLean, Virginia, USA in May 1995. Besides 15 revised refereed technical contributions, the book presents four invited survey papers by key persons heading institutions and projects essentially advancing the state of the art: France Cordova (NASA), James H. Billington (The Library of Congress), Raj Reddy (CMU), and Larry Smarr (NCSA, University of Illinois). The technical papers are organized in topical sections on visualization, document handling and information retrieval, network-based information and resource discovery, and design issues and prototyping.

Proceedings of a May 1999 forum on current issues in digital library research and technology. Papers are divided in sections on ontology and structure, database querying and mining, video, mathematics and musical applications, text and information retrieval, and metadata. Discussion encompasses area

ECDL2000, the Fourth European Conference on Research and Advanced Te- nology for Digital Libraries, is being held this year in Lisbon, Portugal, following previous events in Pisa (1997), Heraklion (1998), and Paris (1999). One major goal of the ECDL conference series has been to draw information professionals, stakeholders, and user communities from both the research world and from - dustry into a discussion of the alternative technologies, policies, and scenarios for global digital libraries. The success of previous conferences makes them a hard act to follow. The eld of digital libraries draws on a truly diverse set of scienti c and technical disciplines. In the past three years, moreover, global cooperation on research and development has emerged as an urgent priority, particularly in the new European Framework Programme and in the Digital Library Initiative in the United States. Because of this diversity, the eld is perhaps still struggling for an identity. But this struggle for identity is itself a source of energy and creativity. P- ticipants in this eld feel themselves to be part of a special community, with special people. Each of us may claim expertise on a narrow issue, with speci c projects, but the choices we make and the methods we use in local solutions can have unforeseen impacts within a growing universe of interconnected resources.

Since its inception in 1997,the EuropeanConferenceon Researchand Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries (ECDL) has come a long way, creating a strong interdisciplinarycommunityofresearchersandpractitionersinthe?eldofdigital libraries. We are proud to present the proceedings of ECDL 2005, the ninth conference in this series, which, following Pisa (1997), Heraklion (1998), Paris (1999), Lisbon (2000), Darmstadt (2001), Rome (2002), Trondheim (2003), and Bath (2004), took place on September 18–23, 2005 in Vienna, Austria. ECDL 2005 featured separate calls for paper and poster submissions, resu- ing in 130 full papers and 32 posters being submitted to the conference. All - pers were subject to a thorough peer-review process, with an 87-person-strong Program Committee and a further 68 additional reviewers from 35 countries from basically all continents sharing the tremendous review load, producing - tween three and four detailed reviews per paper. Based on these, as well as on the discussion that took place during a one-week on-line PC discussion phase, 41 papers were ?nally selected for inclusion in the conference program during a 1. 5 day PC meeting, resulting in an acceptance rate of only 32%. Furthermore, 17 paper submissions were accepted for poster presentations with an additional 13 posters being accepted based on a simpli?ed review process of 2–3 reviews per poster from the poster submission track. Both the full papers as well as extended abstracts of the posters presented at ECDL 2005 are provided in these proceedings.